* 2/23/26 - Crains - With billions on the line, Chicago faces turning point on publicly funded stadiums.................
Buzz Sawyer
With billions on the line, Chicago
faces turning point on publicly funded stadiums
Chicago's professional sports teams have shaped its global identity for decades. Now they're at the heart of a rare, generational choice for city and state leaders: Should taxpayers bet on them to give the region a post-pandemic jolt?
It's the question now before elected officials across cash-strapped Chicago and Illinois as they consider roughly $14 billion worth of proposals from five different pro teams seeking taxpayer support for new or redeveloped facilities and stadium-anchored campuses, including an active threat by the Chicago Bears to leave the state.
Decades of research shows new stadiums typically redistribute local economic activity and spending rather than expand it. But there is less agreement among experts on whether sports-centric, mixed-use real estate developments — the modern style of venues built over the past decade for teams in Atlanta, New York and San Francisco, among other markets — are worthy of public dollars, incentives and subsidies as cities and states adjust to post-COVID patterns and behaviors.
In that context, pressing decisions about the Bears, Chicago White Sox, Chicago Fire FC and the United Center will not only determine what role sports and entertainment play in growing local tax bases and closing budget holes. They will also test local officials' capacity to evaluate and shepherd complex real estate projects at a time when many institutional investors are avoiding Cook County.
"In a world where people are working from home and less connected, you could make the case that sports as a cultural amenity — like a museum or a park — is a good investment of public dollars," says Justin Marlowe, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Municipal Finance. "But how much is that worth? That's the question."
The answer from historical data: Not much. State and local governments spent $33 billion building major pro sports venues in the U.S. and Canada between 1970 and 2020, with the median public contribution covering 73% of construction costs, according to a 2023 study by economists John Charles Bradbury, Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys. The report concluded that economic, social, civic and other benefits mostly fell short of covering public outlays, and stadium subsidies "are not justified as worthwhile public investments."
But unlike past requests for taxpayer help with stadium construction itself, public financing requests from Chicago's pro teams mostly focus on public infrastructure like roads, utilities and public transportation. While those non-stadium elements are increasingly lucrative for teams that control them — Wrigley Field's environs are a good example — they also have higher potential to create long-term economic value to the public, especially for cities hungry for new foot traffic amid the rise of remote work.
Aside from seeking limits to future property taxes at a new NFL stadium in Arlington Heights, the Bears want $855 million in new infrastructure funds to transform the former Arlington International Racecourse property into a $5 billion mixed-use district anchored by a new football palace. In the South Loop, a new privately-financed Fire stadium set for a groundbreaking next month at the 78 is tied to what will likely be hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-increment financing help for roads and riverfront development.
The Sox still envision a new ballpark next door to the Fire with the help of future hotel tax proceeds, and the owners of the United Center want a new CTA Pink Line station and public space to boost the 1901 Project, the $7 billion mixed-use development pitched for the parking lots surrounding the arena.
Illinois has defined industries it wants to leverage for economic growth over the next several years in areas such as life sciences, quantum computing and agricultural technology and logistics. Sports isn't one of them.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has laid bare the state's priorities: While he dedicated $500 million from the state to the new Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park research campus that recently began development in South Chicago, his administration earlier this month specified that projects related to professional sports stadiums are excluded from new Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) bonds to boost economic activity.
Yet a growing number of examples nationwide are showing the merits of taxpayer investment in stadium-centric real estate projects, says Fran Weld, CEO of Baltimore-based stadium strategy and design consultancy Canopy Team.
Weld was previously an executive with the San Francisco Giants, where she helped spearhead the creation of Mission Rock, a 28-acre mixed-use development transforming the area next to the team's Oracle Park with apartments, offices, retail and other projects.
The development — a public-private partnership including the Giants, developer Tishman Speyer and more than 20 Bay Area public agencies — has been a boon for property tax growth in the area and in 2024 lured credit card giant Visa's global headquarters.
A recent San Francisco Chronicle analysis found sales tax receipts in the city's Mission Bay neighborhood, which includes Mission Rock, rose by 31% during the first half of 2025 from the same period in 2019, while the consumer spending metric for many other parts of the city remained below pre-pandemic levels.
Weld says the project's catalyst was a mindset shared by private investors and public agencies that stadium-anchored real estate could contribute to a wide range of city needs, an approach that "isn't what folks were doing 30 to 40 years ago, which led to a lot of less than ideal outcomes."
Mission Rock's special sauce, she says, has been a focus on development not specifically oriented toward stadium users. While new spending helps, the project is also delivering much-needed housing units, 40% of which are required to be affordable to low- and moderate-income renters.
"For so long, it was just retail and entertainment (built near stadiums), and I think what we've seen is that's actually not enough of a pop, not enough of a contributor to the tax base," says Weld, noting Visa's arrival was crucial for generating property taxes to support open space development at the project. "You've got to have people living and working there on a daily basis, which increases the land value, which increases the municipality's revenue and the value to the development itself."
Non-stadium uses are proving to generate more consistent activity at the Battery Atlanta, a mixed-use district next to the Atlanta Braves' Truist Park that includes a concert venue, offices and retail, more than 500 residential units and a 264-room Omni Hotel.
A study last year by real estate services giant Jones Lang LaSalle compared the Battery to the Texas Rangers' newer — but more car-dependent — Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, and found cell phone data usage showed attendees spend an average of 30 to 60 minutes longer on game days at the Atlanta venue.
JLL estimates that at least half of MLB's 30 teams will propose new or redeveloped stadiums in the next 15 years, and "almost universally these organizations want to be moving to that (mixed-use) type of model," says JLL Senior Manager of Americas Research Jacob Rowden, who co-authored the report.
"But now we're in the stage of understanding all the practical limitations and barriers to getting that done, whether it's site selection or details around infrastructure," Rowden says. "The demand is there, but it's going to be a discovery process about what is the best playbook."
Those limitations include the historical baggage that comes when taxpayers and pro sports mix, as shown recently by the Bears stadium saga.
While Illinois legislators have repeatedly declared state money is available for infrastructure help, they've generally balked at legislation helping the team leave publicly-owned Soldier Field with hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding debt from the lakefront venue's 2003 renovation.
The soaring value of sports franchises — the Bears were valued at $8.9 billion when a stake in the team was sold last year — also casts a harsh light on team requests for public help with stadium-focused real estate projects. Among other indications of sports franchise financial wherewithal, JPMorgan Chase reported in November that 20% of 111 billionaire families served by the bank now own controlling stakes in sports teams, up from 6% just three years ago.
"But every development deserves to be treated on its own merits," says Arlington Heights Village Manager Randy Recklaus, a key figure in the northwest suburb's evaluation of the Bears' Arlington Park proposal.
"There are examples of good developments and bad developments. Our job is to make sure that, if it happens, it's a good example of a good one. But they shouldn't be penalized because it's a sports stadium. It should be a level playing field with any other development," Recklaus says.
The optics of handouts to the uber-wealthy underscores the importance of finding incentives and subsidies that guarantee financial benefits for both communities and teams if things go well, and limits exposure for taxpayers if economic growth is slow or doesn't materialize.
Bond financing for new infrastructure at Mission Rock in San Francisco, for example, has been primarily backed by revenues from property taxes generated by the project. That approach is seen as less risky for taxpayers than those tied to an expected boost in visitation, such as hotel tax proceeds used to pay off Soldier Field debt.
Special assessment districts were one recommendation from a study published last year by the Chicago Architecture Center on Chicago's current sports stadium opportunities. That report, which called for Illinois' sports facilities authority to take the lead in shaping new stadium districts, discouraged "narrow tools" like direct subsidies, tax exemptions and bond issuances in favor of tax-increment financing options and arrangements where public investments in infrastructure are repaid through shares of revenue the project generates.
Still, the long-standing arguments against taxpayer help for stadium-driven projects shouldn't be ignored, says Paul Sajovec, who worked for firms that prepared feasibility studies for sports facilities and convention centers before becoming chief of staff for 32nd Ward Ald. Scott Waguespack.
Sajovec says stadium-based projects can have merit if they help revitalize part of a city, but building new infrastructure for them from scratch is "troubling" because stadiums haven't broadly proven to do more than shuffle around existing economic activity.
"Teams are always going to tout the economic activity from construction and jobs. But we used to say when doing these studies, 'How does this compare to if we built pyramids?' " Sajovec says. "If you spent $500 million on pyramids, you'd look at all these jobs and economic impact. But at the end of the day, what is it that you've accomplished?"
Stadium-centric development also hinges on a long-term wager that in-person sports and entertainment will continue to grow as an industry, says Marlowe, the University of Chicago professor. Though sports venues have long histories as popular gathering places, they are less affordable for many people today and face increasing competition from virtual reality experiences.
"That's not a reason to not (build a stadium)," Marlowe says. "But they need to have other amenities that draw people in. Because the game itself might diminish in value."